Israel hit a major gas field in Iran, prompting retaliatory strikes on a gas facility in Qatar. The Pentagon is asking Congress for more than $200 billion to fund the war. It has been revealed that former counter-terrorism director Joe Kent, who resigned over the war in Iran, is under investigation by the FBI. Cesar Chavez has been posthumously accused of sexual abuse. This is Today from The Spectator’s US team.
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When women exit stage right
Sarah Beth Spraggins
At first, the appeal of the New Right seemed like a wry gesture at the absurdity of the liberal order, and a return to something harder, more durable and mysterious. From the comfort of our phones, deep within liberal society, it can be easy to lose our appreciation for what protects us. If the lie of wokeness is that words mattered more than reality, the lie of anti-wokeness is that words bore almost no relation to reality.
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Joe Kent’s resignation was an act of political positioning
Reid Tillman Smith
Voters and elites will distinguish between those who embraced the war and those who refused
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Iran isn’t Trump’s only ‘imminent threat’
Jacob Heilbrunn
The bad news keeps mounting for the President
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HIT THE GAS Iran’s South Pars gas field has been damaged by Israeli strikes. President Trump wrote on Truth Social that Israel “violently lashed out” and that the US “knew nothing” about the attack. Hours later Iran launched retaliatory strikes on Qatar’s Ras Laffan, the world’s largest LNG production facility. The price of Brent crude rose to $111 a barrel.
GIFT OF THE GAB During a Senate hearing on security threats, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard dodged the question of whether the intelligence community had determined Iran posed an “imminent threat.” She said it could develop an intercontinental ballistic missile “before 2035.”
WHAT DEBT? The Pentagon wants the White House to request of more than $200 billion from Congress to fund the war with Iran, the Washington Post reports.
THE BRITISH ARE COMING British military officers have been sent to Florida to help US Central Command develop a plan for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
STOP THE PRESS Senator Markwayne Mullin said his aim was to ensure the Department of Homeland Security wasn’t “the lead story every single day” during his Senate confirmation hearing for the role of DHS secretary.
TOKYO DRIFT President Trump hosts Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi of Japan all day for meetings and a dinner. Japan is one of the countries most affected by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
OH ALAN High-profile lawyer Alan Dershowitz is planning to seek a presidential pardon for the founders of “orgasmic mediation” startup OneTaste, who face 20 years in federal prison for forced labor conspiracy. (More on the case here.)
CHAVEZ ACCUSATIONS Labor rights leader Cesar Chavez has been posthumously accused of sexually abusing girls and women in the 1960s and 1970s, according to a New York Times investigation.
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A vision came to me in the West Wing
What does it take to get a president who spent ten years campaigning against forever wars to suddenly change tack? Joe Kent, the former director the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned on Monday over Trump’s war in Iran, described two possible ways on Tucker Carlson’s podcast.
One way, Kent claims, is via the media echo chamber. He tells Carlson that Israeli officials have come to US officials with their own intel on how Iran is indeed an imminent threat, or that there is a clear path to victory. This information gets laundered through talking heads on TV – “your Mark Levins, Sean Hannitys, etc.” – or pieces in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, or through texts and phone calls. “Yet if you looked in [American] classified intelligence, we didn’t see any of that.”
The other way is “much darker” – essentially, making Trump feel like he’s under threat. “We still don’t know what happened in Butler. We don’t know what happened with Charlie Kirk.” Kent then describes an encounter with Kirk last June in the West Wing, which ended up being Kirk’s last words to him: “Joe, stop us from getting into a war with Iran.”
Yes, yes, but who among us has Charlie Kirk not appeared to in a dream uttering prophecies and orders from on high? I’ve become slightly skeptical of anyone playing the Charlie card, though Kent was blocked by the FBI from investigating Kirk’s death when he was directing the NCC. And as Semafor reported last night, Kent been under investigation by the FBI since before his resignation. Perhaps it’s just that Kash Patel is touchy about getting upstaged by a chiseled Green Beret.
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Revealed: Keir Starmer’s new plan to get closer to the EU
Tim Shipman
What is the way out of this mess? Having fallen out with Donald Trump, Starmer is convinced that a new deal with the EU is his get-out-of-jail-free card. Thomas-Symonds is due to be in Brussels for the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, where he and Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security, will hold bilateral meetings. These will push forward existing negotiations – due to wrap up at a summit in June or July – and start a second phase of talks. A senior government source says negotiations over an “SPS deal” on food and animal products are “generally going well,” as are talks on a joint emissions trading scheme, something which “starts to seem much more important” in the context of Iran.
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Nintendo and the plumber who conquered the world
Stephen Sexton
Keza MacDonald’s charming and insightful history of Nintendo traces its origins as a manufacturer of playing cards in late-1890s Kyoto to the internationally admired and beloved powerhouse of gaming innovation it would become a century and a quarter later. And while some readers will know this trajectory, many will be surprised to learn of the diversity of business interests Nintendo has explored over the years – “instant rice, taxis and, notoriously but fleetingly, pay-by-the-hour love hotels.” The book is full of such curiosities.
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Why King Charles should still visit Trump
Freddy speaks to Robert Hardman
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